Newsquest's Welsh newspapers are set to be printed in England after the regional newspaper company announced plans to shut down its Newport printing operations, with the loss of up to 21 jobs.

The regional newspaper company will also turn the evening South Wales Argus into a morning paper as part of the changes, prompted by a review that found "significant spare capacity" in the company's printing plants.

The plan, currently subject to staff consultation, would see other Welsh titles including the Penarth Times and the Western Telegraph in Pembrokeshire printed in England.

"There's enough capacity in Weymouth, Oxford and Worcester to absorb the work that is currently done in Newport," said Gavin Steacy, the regional managing director of Newsquest Wales and Gloucestershire.

Defending the decision to close Newport's only Welsh printing plant, Steacy said that many accounting functions for south-west England had been centralised in Newport. "It is not a one-way track out of Wales," he added.

The jobs are under threat if the plan, under consultation with staff, is carried out and Welsh titles printed at the Newport site transfer to other Newsquest plants in England.

If Newsquest's plan goes ahead, the South Wales Argus will switch from an afternoon to a morning paper and print overnight at other Newsquest sites.

Currently only the Saturday edition of the Monday to Saturday paper, which covers south-east Wales, prints overnight.

"As a result of this review it is proposed to close the Newport press facility and migrate Wales and Gloucestershire titles to other Newsquest print sites that can offer more colour and produce our titles more efficiently without the need for pre-printing and inserting, thereby reducing costs significantly for the group," Newsquest said in a statement.

"This proposal would mean that roles of the 21 staff currently working in the Newport press, engineering and computer-to-plate areas would become redundant."

The company has entered a 30-day consultation period to consider alternatives to redundancies.

Newsquest has been at the forefront of converting evening newspapers to morning titles over the past two years, switching the York Evening Press, the Bolton Evening News and the Lancashire Evening Telegraph.

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